Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard 1428
This is another universe from where I live and grew up.
The number of days you can be absent without a good reason is now back to five per semester. (it was up to 12 for a while, but our wonderful christian-conservative government has put the old limit back.) This is five days signed for by your parents.
Any more, and you need a MD's order; every school has appointments with relevant clinics. Every school is obliged to react by reports to the child abuse system on delinquencies. If this goes far enough you'll end in a foster home.
It will seem to get worse than better because there's generation lag. Yup. And people are working on correcting this. Unfortunately...
When you are 15 you need to qualify for high school. Different schools have different requirements, and you need to study to get to the good ones. It is normal for pupils to take a subject or two extra, so they have one to ditch if they get a bad grade. Taking home economics (or whatever it is called these days) as a buffer is not unheard of.
Tell me about it. My nephew has taken the SATs four times to get a higher grade. I only had one chance and that was all. When the liberals come out of the Commie closet...
When in high school the school can and will flunk you outright on things like bad attendance, bad grades, unrulyness etc. You will get a warning or two, and then you are straight out. For the worse offenses formal relegation is still used.
The nerds have organized, and have contests in physics, astronomy, math and various games. "The gathering" is their showpiece. (www.gathering.org). They have the silent and strong support of employers federations and university buttociations.
-- mrr
I see we are in a different place. Many of these are non-starters here. Grandstanding by administrations is generally frowned on...
Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard 1429
Alt Folklore Computers from Newsgroups
Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard 1427